Many of us love the genre of CRPG, a genre in which we usually spend countless hours delving into a (usually medieval) fantasy world questing and slowly unraveling its lore while saving the world. What would happen if you tried to take this core CRPG experience and compressed it into a more casual laid back experience that you can play through in about 5-6 hours? You would probably end up with something like the Hero of the Kingdom games. Hero of the Kingdom II doesn't try to "wow" you with its story; The story is simple and it's there to keep you occupied through the end, and it serves this purpose well. I do wish some of the dialogue was a bit better, and judging from that I don't think the developers are native English speakers, but it mostly doesn't get too distracting. The gameplay is as simple as it gets: You click on items to collect them, and trade with townspeople to complete quests, earn money and reputation, and further the story. There's no real way for the player to die, so don't be afraid to experiment a bit; The game has a collection of in-game achievements to reward people who go off the beaten path. HotK II is a fun little game that knows what it wants to be: A relaxing casual adventure without many bells and whistles, and enough interactivity to thoroughly tickle that completionist part of our brains. I do have two complaints: This game has no manual save system, and that kind of sucks when you're trying to get all the in-game achievements. The game saves when you exit to the menu, which is fine, but manual saving would make it a lot less of a hassle for completionists without starting the game from scratch. The other complaint I have is more of a nitpick, though it's one that still kinda bothered me: The game's presentation is fairly solid throughout, with the isometric graphics really harkening back to that late 90s / early 2000s CRPG feeling. However, I felt that the ending was very rushed and it basically just ends with a "the end" screen.
